Of course, the trouble with making a post like my last is that it can’t cover everything. Within hours, and over the next day, I thought of nearly half a dozen things I left out.
Another problem is, some things I am certain of on some days; and on other days, some of those same things are questionable at best.
The Book of Bart is an article I found today. It’s the story of a man who was converted to evangelical Christianity at age 15; he went on to seminary school, and continued to study theology, especially ancient texts, for twelve years. And then, the more he looked at the ancient texts, the more discrepencies he found; and the more they added up, the less he was able to believe what he’d learned as an evangelical, then to the point he ceased to believe anything at all.
He now writes the sort of books I’ve been reading — books that go looking for the truth of the historical facts behind what became the New Testament. The sort of books that, once you read them, you either reject out of hand…or realize there might be something to them, in which case there’s no going back. Even if you hold on to your faith, you have to admit: I could be wrong; this could all be wrong; there might not be One Right Answer, just the right one for me.
There are days I think about calling myself some sort of Christian again. Wanting that stability I grew up with. But having gone so far afield from where I started, I would need some sort of certainty, in both mind and heart. Something that could reconcile faith with reason, with the possibilities. Christianity would have to reinvent itself, I think, before I could comfortably go back to any sort of Christian church. And Florida is probably more likely to get a snowstorm in July, than Christianity admit they might have been wrong about what happened 2000 years ago.
So…back I go. Reading more books, going to my UU church, singing in the choir, and doing a lot of thinking and internal searching.
